Rare's most recent release was last year's Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, and the studio was also responsible for the Avatar part of the New Xbox Experience. In keeping with the studio's notorious media-shy nature, Rare's current projects are still a mystery. But while the changes being made appear to be good for the studio, like many companies within the industry, it looks like there is a good possibility that Rare will also see some lost jobs.

"As the entire industry struggles to address the increasing scale and
cost of development," studio manager Mark Betteridge explained. "We too
have felt a need to restructure our current approach so we can speed
development and better manage the scale required to create high quality
games."

"With four projects recently underway, now is the right time to make this change," he continued. While that sounds well and good, let's hope that cuts don't need to be made... that story is becoming a depressingly common one in recent days. Rare was an expensive acquisition for Microsoft, and with the studio creating well-reviewed games that don't seem to sell in large numbers restructuring might have been only a matter of time. We wish everyone at Rare the best.